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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

VeganMoFo - Halloweegan Spookitty Heads

It sure seems like I'm obsessed with making balls. I'm always rolling some type of dough between my hands and shaping it into a ball. Peanut butter balls, coconut balls, veggie balls, and now chocolate balls. Balls, balls, balls!

Ingredients for the ears, noses, and whiskers:
24 whole almonds
12 almond slices
a few raisins or dates (frozen)

1- Carefully cut each whole almond in half to create two kitty ears. Use a sharp non-serrated knife and a cutting board-it will save you time. And watch your fingers!
2- Still using a non-serrated knife, cut the almond slices in half to make the little triangular-ish noses.
3- Cut each raisin into thin strips. Raisins are definitely less sticky and easier to cut if they are frozen. These will be your little whiskers, you will need 48 whiskers for 12 kitties.

1- Grind the graham cracker pieces in a food processor. Give it a few pulses until most of it looks like breadcrumbs, but leave a few bigger chunks in there. After they are ground, you will end up with about 1 1/4 cup of graham crumbs. Transfer them to a medium sized bowl.
2- Melt the chocolate with the coconut milk. I always melt my chocolate chips in the microwave: cook on high for 15 seconds, stir, cook 15 seconds more, stir again, cook 15 seconds more. Repeat until the chocolate is completely melted and smooth.
3- Stir the melted chocolate into the graham cracker crumbs and knead it until it feels like firm play-doh. The heat from your hand will make it smooth. If it's too dry and crumbly add a bit more milk.
4- Separate the dough into 12 pieces and shape each piece into balls.

Time to attach the ears, noses, and whiskers!

1- Stick two almond halves on top of each "cat head" as the ears.
2- Stick 4 raisin strips on the front of each ball, 2 on the left and 2 on the right-these are your little whiskers. This is when those kitchen tweezers come in handy!
3- Stick an almond slice in between the two sets of whiskers as the noses. If the noses or whiskers aren't sticking to the face, use a little melted chocolate as glue to hold them in place.

1- Mix the powdered sugar and the milk and stir to make a smooth icing.
2- Using a decorating tip, draw the white part of the eyes on each cat. If you don't have a decorating tip, you can use a mini Ziploc bag, or just draw the eyes on with a toothpick dipped in the icing. It helps to have the Spookitties facing up to keep the icing from running down their faces.
3- Dip a toothpick in the melted chocolate chips and draw vertical lines down the middle of the eyes.

This makes 12 kitties and they go fast!

*I don't like overly sweet things, but if you do, you can replace 1 tablespoon of milk with 1 tablespoon of agave or maple syrup.

And now, here's the cutest Spookitty of them all! This is our kitty friend that visits us every day. He lives in the neighborhood, but we don't know exactly where because he's very mysterious. Doesn't he look terribly spooky here?

and your neighborhood kitty does look pretty spooky. i'm such a sucker for black kitties, too! they're my fav! we have 4 cats and none of them are black - makes me sadfaced sometimes, but it's all good! ahahahahaaa!